Honoring Our Heroes Act of 2025

The program changed from a two-year pilot to a seven-year direct authority. The Secretary is now required to furnish headstones, burial markers, or medallions rather than establishing a pilot program.

Medallions are now included alongside headstones and burial markers as items the Secretary may furnish.

Eligibility expanded significantly. The old version covered veterans who died on or before November 1, 1990. The new version covers veterans who are eligible for national cemetery burial, died on or after December 7, 1941, and have not already been provided a headstone, marker, or medallion.

The new version explicitly references section 2306 of title 38 as the legal basis and waives the limitation in section 8041(b) of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990, which had previously restricted headstone funding.

The detailed application process (subsection b of the original) was removed from the bill text, presumably to be handled under existing VA regulations.

A new Section 3 extends the deadline in section 5503(d)(7) of title 38 for certain pension payments from November 30, 2031 to February 29, 2032. This is an entirely new provision not present in the introduced version.